In September, 2013, the Tech Times reported on a study conducted by Michigan State doctoral candidate Aditi Paul that found 86 percent of online daters (from a sample of 4,002) are “cautious to trust people they meet online for fear they are receiving false information.” The following month, the Pew Research Center reported that approximately 54 percent of online daters have felt that a person they’ve met through the site or app has “seriously misrepresented themselves in their profile.” Inspired by the 2010 documentary Catfish, MTV's Catfish: The TV Show features individuals going through the uncertain process of online dating.
Error-prone though they may be, Steve Ward cited these examples when discussing the inspiration for Love Lab, a dating app he developed that promises a more secure online experience than mainstream alternatives. Though its matching algorithms are akin to Tinder’s (users browse and swipe through the profiles of people near them), the app, which is currently in beta, stresses the importance of “authenticating dating” – namely through identity verification.
Love Lab identifies users with a hierarchy of five optional “trust levels,” which they can fulfill with actions ranging in depth. To reach the first, a user connects one or more of her social media accounts. For the second, she takes a photo of herself within the app, which is compared to one of her social media profile photos. Third, she enters her name, address, and date of birth (“which is kept strictly confidential and used for verification purposes only,” Ward said), which is cross-checked with public records. The app then generates a multiple-choice quiz based on these public records for the user to take. (If she passes, she’s fulfilled the fourth level.) To unlock the fifth trust level, the user must clear a background check.
“Each trust level is free and optional with no barriers of entry or communication other than the required confirmation bias,” Ward said.
For in-app communication, each user receives a six-digit Contact Code, which she can send to a potential match instead of her raw contact information. That user can look her up in the app and send a Match Request, which Ward analogized to a Facebook friend request. (Ward also champions the Contact Code as a means to encourage strangers met in-person to join Love Lab; in theory, a user can give her Contact Code to someone she meets at a bar, implicitly asking him to sign up.)
Supplementing the Contact Code, the messaging feature contributes an additional layer of privacy protection. Taking a cue from apps like SnapChat, whose primary appeal lies in their use of ephemeral data, it displays only the most recent 25 text messages between two users and deletes users’ photos and videos right after they’ve been viewed, Ward said.
“With most ephemeral messaging apps there is only short form video allowed that lasts for 30 seconds or less and will play on a loop until the person changes screens. In Love Lab the video can be minutes long, but it is played only once and expires immediately thereafter,” he explained.
According to Ward, Love Lab has attracted “nearly a thousand early adopters” who are providing feedback before the app’s projected Android launch in March (it’s currently available in the App Store). The startup has raised $335,000 in seed funding, he said.
For the near future, “the goal is to enhance and streamline the user experience on iOS as much as possible before releasing a comparable Android app. Then it will be time to activate digital paid advertising. Once we've fully stabilized the product for each operating system, we will shift our focus to developing the premium features that we hope people would be willing to pay for,” Ward said.
He also envisions taking the app in a more personal, even therapeutic, direction. Ward entertains the additions of self-help video coaching, peer-to-peer support, and professional matchmaking – a series of add-ons unseen in the online dating industry.
“Over time, we hope to enhance the offering with more personal service,” he added. “Once we've successfully scaled this vertical, we will consider extending our platform into other industries experiencing a similar trust gap.”
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